Elena’s lips quirked. “I’ll bet. But no. I do have work.” She started to leave, then stopped, turned, and picked up the cupcake she’d dumped on Maddie’s desk minutes ago. “A shame for it to go to waste.”
“Yep.” Maddie tried to sound neutral. Hot damn. As Elena turned to go, Maddie grinned so wide her cheeks hurt.
“And stop smiling,” Elena said on her way to her desk, not looking back.
How did she do that?
“It’s blinding,” she added.
Maddie laughed.
Okay, so that was not the worst thing to ever happen.
BlogSpot: Aliens of New York
By Maddie as Hell
I remember the time I learned to ride a bike. I pushed off from the curb at my old house on Mitchell St, South Penrith. I was wobbling like crazy. My older brother was holding his sides from laughing and calling out names, and my mother was telling him to be quiet and offering me encouragement.
I fell off. It hurt. I got back on. I fell off. It hurt some more. I got back on.
When people say something’s like riding a bike, I think maybe they mean it will hurt sometimes, but it will get better.
Today, I remembered how to smile.
I wonder whether it will hurt later.
CHAPTER 6
An Exercise in Tolerance
It became a…thing between them. Oh how Elena hated the imprecision of that word. Late at night, when no one was around, Madeleine increasingly shared things with her. As if Elena was anyone else and didn’t run a multimillion-dollar global organisation and could fire her with the twitch of a finger.
At first, she’d tried to dissuade the woman. Distance was required. “I’m sure you’d rather be writing about dead people,” Elena had suggested one night. “I know I’d prefer you were.”
Madeleine had merely laughed.
Tonight, the woman was wearing some ode-to-grunge T-shirt for a band that probably shouldn’t have gotten out of a Seattle basement. Her dark blue jeans curved snugly around her ass. And the boots, black and shiny…well, the boots Elena approved of. She owned a few of that style herself, although hers weren’t knock-offs. But the shirt was an abomination. Grey, bland, and formless, it did nothing to flatter Madeleine’s appealing shape.
“Why do you wear that?” she asked. “Ugly rock bands as workwear?”
“You don’t like Alice in Chains?” Maddie seemed intrigued. “You know, being on the midnight shift, the only perk of the job is getting to dress how I like. It’s not like I see anyone.”
“You see me.” Elena gave her a pointed look.
Madeleine stopped. “Oh. Yeah. I guess, well, yeah, I do. So you want me to dress for you?” Her eyes flew wide open. “Oh hell. That came out wrong.”
Elena withheld a snort of laughter. Really, squirming Madeleine was her favourite kind. She wondered when that had happened. Having a favourite kind of anything regarding this woman. “Why wear rock bands at all?”
“They’re not just rock, though. They’re grunge. They’re a protest to the boring sameness of ’90s music, a primal scream that music should be more than mass-produced, predictable pulp.”
“Until all the grunge bands were ripped out of Seattle, signed to record labels, and became mass-produced, predictable pulp.” Elena smirked. “Sorry, but your protest music sold out.”
“Oh, it’s not my music.”
“What?”
“I don’t really like grunge music.” She gave Elena a bright smile. “I just really like the shirts.”
Elena felt a headache coming on. The woman was utterly impossible. Figuring her out was akin to doing her corporate taxes in braille. While stoned.
“You don’t like grunge,” Elena repeated.
“Nope.”
“I’m probably going to regret this, but where are your musical tastes inclined? Loud Australian pub thrash?” Even as she said it, she couldn’t actually picture it. Not someone who wrote blogs the way Madeleine did.
Madeleine shot her a mysterious smile. “Too hard to explain. I’ll have to show you.”
Elena frowned. “How?”
“Tomorrow.”
* * *
Elena found a USB stick on her desk the next evening when she came back from a dinner meeting. It had the label: Music 4 E. She glanced at the crime reporter’s desk. Madeleine was on the phone, her fingers playing restlessly with the snow dome. Elena could hear conversation snatches. Something to do with following up a drug bust of some sort.
Well. It was a relief not to be drawn into another riddle of a conversation. She really did have a lot of work to do. Such as a Skype call with a Chicago publisher contemplating selling. He was so close to signing, she could taste it. And Elena still had to review the budget notes for Style Sydney that her accountant had sent over. So, she had absolutely no time or interest in putting that USB drive into her computer.
